Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir by Erika L. Sánchez

Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the ‘90s, Erika L. Sánchez was a self-described pariah, misfit, and disappointment—a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy and dreamed of an unlikely life as a poet. Twenty-five years later, she’s now an award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist, but she’s still got an irrepressible laugh, an acerbic wit, and singular powers of perception about the world around her.

In these essays about everything from sex to white feminism to debilitating depression to the redemptive pursuits of spirituality, art, and travel, Sánchez reveals an interior life that is rich with ideas, self-awareness, and perception—that of a woman who charted a path entirely of her own making. Raunchy, insightful, unapologetic, and brutally honest, Crying in the Bathroom is Sánchez at her best: a book that will make you feel that post-confessional high that comes from talking for hours with your best friend.